ADDRESS OF PROF. G. C. SWALLOW 


ON 


/SGRICULTURAL EDUCATION, 


The Library 
ef the 
University of [tenis 
DEIVERED BEFORE THE 


MISSOURI STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE, 
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JEFFERSON CITY, 


TANUARBRY 29, 1868. 


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| , | JEFFERSON CITY : 
ie KIRBY & COOPER, PRINTERS AND BINDERS>. 
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AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 


Mr. PRESIDENT AND MEMBERS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY: 


We all admit that there 2s an educatzon suited to the wants of those 
entering upon the duties of the learned professions; that no one can 
expect to attain unto the highest success as a physician, a lawyer or 
as a preacher, unless he has first received a thorough training in the 
course of studies prescribed for his particular profession. But some 
doubt whether there be any education peculiarly adapted to and nec- 
essary for the highest degree of excellence in agricultural and me- 
chanical pursuits; and they do not feel the necessity of establishing 
industrial schools. 

As we are now called upon to decide a question which will give 
the youth of Missouri, for generations to come, a school where they 
can be trained for the highest excellence in mechanical and agricul- 
tural pursuits, or which will deprive them of those advantages for 
many years to come, it is a matter of great moment to decide wisely. 

Were some question to be decided of equal importance to either of 
the learned professions, or even to the merchants or bankers of the 
State, as is this question of the industrial ‘college to the farmers and 
mechanics, you would see such an ingathering about these halls as 
would secure a full appreciation of the whole subject matter. 

We come, as in duty bound by the law creating the State Board of 
Agriculture, to ask at your hands a patient examination of the whole 
question, and the adoption of such legislation as will secure to our 
youth the best possible education to fit them for the farm and work- 
shop. A liberal education has generally taken them to the learned 
professions; but we wish to give them a liberal education that will 
increase their love for the industrial pursuits. 

The prejudice somewhat prevalent against “book farming,” or 
“scientific farming,” arises in part, doubtless, from the fact that some 
who farm on scientific principles do not always succeed. But this ar- 
gument is equally strong against those who pursue the “good old 
way,” as they do not always succeed. It would also apply against all 
learning, as educated men are often less successful. And _ besides, 
many who pretend to farm on scientific principles are mere pretend- 
ers, who know nothing of science. No one doubts that, experience is 
valuable to the farmer; and science is made up of principles derived 
from the experience of all who have lived before us—science is the 
essence of all experience. The science of agriculture is derived from 
the experience of all farmers from Adam to the present time. 


S8884 | 


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AJjl of us know some of these scientific principles, and others we 
do not know. We know how to make our gardens yield fruit seven 
monthsin the year; but all do not know how the gardens of Alcinous 
were made to yield fruit éwelve months in the year. 

Washington, who was a book farmer, raised better crops than his 
neighbors; and Lavoisier, a distinguished French savan, doubled the 
crops of his domain, and quadrupled his profits, by sezentitic farming. 
Would it not benefit our young farmers to know how these results 
were obtained? And this is part of what an agricultural college will 
teach. But this not enough; we want to know more than the results 
and how they were obtained. 

Itis a well-known fact that salt has greatly increased crops of wheat; 
but this fact, without knowing why it is useful, might be even worse 
than useless to the farmer, as an application of it would in some 
places prove absolutely injurious. Hence, to render this fact really 
useful, we must know the composition and food of the wheat plant; 
how much salt it wants, the composition and structure of the soil; 
whether it contains salt enough, the location of the soil, the nature of 
prevailing winds—whether, as in many places, they will convey any salt 
to the crop. These investigations require a whole range of scientific 
knowledge—geology and chemistry to understand the soil, vegetable. 
physiology and chemistry for the wheat, and geography and meteorol- 
ogy to determine the effects of the atmosphere and winds. 

This fully illustrates the necessity of knowing the whole range of 
agricultural science, that we may successtully use the facts derived 
from the experience of others. 

Horses are sometimes relieved from severe illness by bleeding; 
hence some use the lancet whenever the horse shows symptoms of 
disease, often to the great injury of this noble animal. Therefore it is 
important to know the physiology of the horse, to understand his 
diseases and the best remedies for each. 

Theimproved breeds of horses, cattle, sheep, swine, and fowls have 
been produced by a long and careful investigation of the physical 
natures of these animals, the food best adapted to their natures, and 
the crosses calculated to produce any desired results. If these prin- 
ciples are unknown or neglected, the blooded horse will degenerate 
into the hack, the shepherd’s dog into the useless cur, and the Dur- 
ham into the scrub. All these invaluable principles are fully set 
forth in the science of animal physiology, taught in agricultural 
schools. In France there are several schools devoted exclusively to 
educating men for rearing and training horses. It is by these princi- 
ples, this science, that the wolf, or wild dog, has been converted into 
the greyhound and the noble New Foundland. 

The principles of vegetable physiology are no less important to the 
farmer. By them our rich cereals have been produced from wild 
grasses and grains, our delicious apples from the bitter crab, the lus- 
cious peach from the dry, wild almond; the tame grape from the wild, 


5 


and the potato from a dry, poisonous wild root. And by the same prin- 
ciples of science these products of the farm and the orchard are being 
constantly improved. These wonderful results of vegetable science 
the ancients attributed to divine powers, under the name of Pan, 
Ceres, and Pomona. 

But those who may study vegetable physiology in our industrial 
college, will find their science more propitious than the smiles of the 
whole catalogue of rural! deities. 

Searcely any subject should demand the more serious consideration 
of the citizen and the State than the exhaustion of the soil. ‘The 
soil is by far the most valuable of all our possessions. By proper 
care it may be indefinitely increased in productiveness and value; 
but, by bad husbandry, it will be gradually exhausted, and finally be- 
come a barren waste. Some of the most fruitful regions of the globe 
have become barren deserts, and a few wild animals now occupy the 
places where populous nations once dwelt. 

Some say this desolation is the result of the curse of God for na- 
tional sins. If so, I will venture the assertion that their greatest sin 
was the improvident destruction of forests, and the exhaustive culti- 
vation of soils; as, without these acts, the desolation would have 
been impossible by the ordinary course of events. Let us be warned 
by the fate of Babylonia and other Eastern nations, by the exhausted 
regions in our own countrv, yea, and by exhausted fields in our own 
new and fertile State. He who exhausts his soil, wastes the birth-: 
right of his children and undermines the power and prosperity of the 
State. The State, therefore, should see to it that our forests be pre- 
served, and our soils guarded against deterioration. No power but 
the knowledge of agricultural science can do this. 

Let our farmers know the fertilizing ingredients of soils, and what 
each crop removes and how it may be restored; and above all, let 
them fully understand the great wrong and fatal consequences of the 
exhausting process, and they will soon adopt improved modes of ecul- 
ture. Let them know that one crop of tobacco takes from the soil as 
much as one hundred crops of hemp; that tobacco has well nigh 
ruined the fertility of large areas in the older states, and it will be- 
come a less popular staple. Let them fully appreciate that a crop of 
clover will restore to the soil all the fertilizing ingredients removed . 
by a crop of wheat, and clover will more frequently occupy our fields. 
Let them know of the vast beds of marl beneath large areas of our 
soils to keep up their productive energies, and they will soon run the 
subsoil plow deep enough to bring up its rich ingredients and mingle 
them with the soil. 

Let our agricultural college make known these and a hundred 
other means of promoting the fertility of our lands, and we shall have _ 
the best possible guarantee against this great calamity of exhausted 
soils and depopulated States. 7 

If our industrial college should do this and nothing more, it will 


| 


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have repaid the State a thousand fold for the most munificent endow- 
ment, and for the most anxious care of every statesman and private 
citizen. 

Such are a few hints of the vast storehouse of useful knowledge 
which an agricultural school would impress upon its pupils. Instead 
of there being any lack of materials useful to a student of agriculture, 
the difficulty will be to select a portion small enough to enable the 
student to master it in the time allotted to the college course. 

It is a time-honored maxim that the youth should study what the 
man is to practice. The whole business of the farmer may be expressed 
in two words—aid natwre—make two blades of grass grow where but 
one grew before. Cultivate the crab apple into the pippin, transform 
the mountain sheep into the South-Down, and the snarling wolf into 
the shepherd dog. Such are the ennobling duties of the farmer; his 
labors are with nature, and his success must depend upon their accord- 
ance with nature, or the laws of natural science. Farmers, then, above 
all men, need a thorcugh knowledge of trwe philosophy and natural 
science. Let those, therefore, who would be farmers, and would excel 
in the profession, study the natural sciences, especially those depart- 
ments that lie at the foundations of practical agriculture. 

When Augustus Oesar returned to imperial Rome from the wars 
which established the empire, he wished to call his veteran soldiers 
and the people back to their traditional love of agriculture. Land was 
distributed to the war-worn soldiers, and Virgil was employed to 
teach them the science and the beauties and glories of rural pursuits. 

Those grand old poetical lectures were the theme of every shep- 
herd and herdsman, and the burden of the vine-dresser’s song. They 
inspired new confidence, new love, and new zeal in every department 
of agriculture. 

I would that some master pen or tongue would call us back to our 
former love of the farm and country hfe; that our youth of country, 
village, and city could see a sparkling naiad in every stream and 
fountain, and a dryad in every tree of forest and copse; that Ceres 
might lead them to our broad prairies, and Pomona, with her luscious 
fruit, allure them to the Arcadian valleys and glorious hills of our 
Ozark highlands; that our maidens, with sparkling eye and glowing 
cheek, might follow Flora to the blooming fields and Diana to the 
hills and mountain glades, until the simplicity and beauty and happi- 
ness of Eden be restored to all our borders. 

In the city is an everlasting struggle between fashion and stable 
habits; extravagance and penury; integrity and a necessity for money; 
between blooming chastity and ardent manhood. Amid the luxuries 


and vitiated atmospheres of cities, health is undermined and the 
physical powers degenerate; and the constant occurrence of exciting 
topics and thrilling incidents to excite, and great crises to overtax the 


intellect, is most detrimental to that equilibrium of powers most desir- 
able in intellectual development. 


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Hence it happens that no city has within itself the power recupera- 
tive to keep up its own financial, physical, and political status. 

It is the constant supply of manly men and blooming women from 
the mountains and valleys and forests and prairies of the country that 
populates the cities, and constantly infuses new vitality and energy 
into every department of those hotbeds of civilization. 

Nations have been prosperous and stable while the rural popula- 
tions have prevailed, but they have decayed when metropolitan 
manners and habits have become dominant. 

It is the higher culture of those engaged in metropolitan pursuits, 
and the consequent facility they possess to become distinguished and 
obtain public positions, which draw the best talent of the country to 
the cities. Give us an equal culture for the farmer and the mechanic, 
and thus open to him equal chances for success and distinction, and 
let that culture portray the superior pleasures of rural pursuits, and 
you will have the best possible means of keeping up the proper equi- 
librium of country and city populations. 

Make your industrial college what it should be—a living, ever-mul- 
tiplying power, to make the country prosperous and happy, and able 
to compete with the cities for the best talent of the land. 

I have thus intimated that there are valuable stores of science, 
greatly useful to those engaged in industrial pursuits, and that we 
need some new influences to keep up the proper balance of powers 
between our rural and metropolitan populations. 

What can better diffuse these principles of the industrial sciences 
than an industrial college? What better to impress our youth with a 
love of country life than a college whose chairs are filled with men of 
sound science, in love with the farm and full of living, active powers ? 
Such men will attract pupils, and such men will leave their impress 
upon the minds they educate. 

That we need such a school, and that it should be established at 
once, has been declared by the peoplein the most positive and decided 
terms. For twenty years the newspapers of the State have teemed 
with facts and arguments to prove its importance; every report and 
book published upon our resources have proved its utility; and the 
farmers and mechanics of the State have spoken in the most positive 
terms, and made these legislative halls eloquent with their memorials 
for schools suited to their wants. 

In 1852, to go back no further, the farmers and mechanics of Boone 
issued an address to the State and memorial to our legislators. Let 
me read what they said in 1852: 


“FeLLow CriizEns: To you, who have with usa common interest in 
all that can promote our success and secure the prosperity of our pro- 
fessions, we appeal for your sympathy, for your aid and co-operation, 
in our efforts to place the agricultural and mechanical arts of Missouri 
in that pre-eminence they so richly deserve. While the practical 
deductions of science have given a new impulse, infused new life and 


8 


energy into almost every department of human industry, we are culti- 
vating our farms as did our sires and grandsires before us. While 
progress is stamped upon everything, the farmer and the mechanic 
are plodding on ‘in the good old way of our fathers.’ The result is, 
we, in this land of mighty forests, are importing and paying three 
prices for our lumber. Our houses, plankroads, and fences cost twice 
their usual prices. We go east for our agricultural and mechanical 
implements of every grade, from the plow to the butterstamp. With 
iron mountains and inexhaustible coal beds, we import every article 
of iron, from the anvil to the ten-penny nail. While we are exhaust- 
ing the virgin wealth of the richest soil the sun shines upon, our crops 
are no better than those harvested from the once barren hills of New 
England; and inferior races of stock crop our luxuriant prairies. - 

“The divine economy wisely provides that we shall eat our bread 
by the sweat of the brow; yet no divine or human wisdom demands 
that we shall toil and sweat and sweat and toil on from year to year, 
simply for the corn-cake and bacon our appetites demand. We 
believe we can do better—that we can become better farmers and 
better mechanics. 

“In our effort, we ask the sympathy and aid of every profession. We 
do not ask others to labor for our benefit only, but for theirs also. We 
are the great heart of the body politic; if its pulsations are languid, 
the life blood will flow feebly in every department of human industry. 
We do not ask it as a favor, we demand it as a debt of long standing, 
one so just that all have frankly confessed the obligation whenever 
and wherever its claims have been presented. 

“We have been-freely taxed for the support of public schools, and 
have contributed liberally for the endowment of colleges and univer- 
sities, for the education of physicians and clergymen, lawyers and gen- 
tlemen; and yet we look in vain for a school where the science of 
agriculture is practically taught. 

“This we contend is wrong; and, as the guardians of our children’s 
inheritance, as the lovers of our common country, we have resolved to 
do our duty in remedying the evil; that we, who have so freely aided 
others, will make one manly effort to aid ourselves.” 

These were the noble views of the farmers and mechanics of Boone 
sixteen years ago. 

In the following winter, 1853, the farmers and mechanics of St. Louis 
county formed an agricultural and mechanical association. They re- 
iterated the sentiment of their brethren of Boone, and declared their 
determination “To induce our State to provide a school, or an ad- 
junct to some school, where our sons may be thoroughly and practi- 
cally taught all those sciences which pertain to the agricultural and 
mechanical arts.” 

It may be said, we have good schools now. Thisis true; and it is 
doubtless true that the branches provided for are as well taught as 
their means will permit, and that they answer all the purposes of the 


9! 


learned professions. We wish them so educated that they can bring 
all the treasures of science to the improvement of the farm and the 
workshop. 

Our sons can discourse learnedly upon the feet and cwsuras of the 
Greek hexameter, and sing “ 7ttyre tu patw” with all the sweet ele- 
gance of a Virgil, but they have scarcely dreamed that fixed laws gov- 
ern the developments of animal and vegetable structure. They are 
left in stupid ignorance of the glorious miracles of the organic world— 
the life-giving flow of the sap, and the development of leaf flower and 
fruit—the pulsations of the life-blood, and the telegraphic connection 
of the mind, nerve, and muscle. They can measure the hight ofa 
lunar mountain and decompose the nebule of the milky way; yet 
their science would be at fault in removing a mole-hill, or in com- 
pounding a cement to pave a footpath. 

In 1865 the State Agricultural and Mechanical Association, in a me- 
morial to the Legislature, use these words: 

“Your memorialists cannot better conclude the duties assigned 
them than by soliciting the favorable consideration by your honora- 
ble body of the following resolutions, and recommending immediate 
action thereon: 

“ Resolved, That the General Assembly of this State is respectfully 
requested to direct the State Geologist to give special attention to the 
agricultural interests of the State, to examine the mechanical and 
chemical properties of all soils and fertilizers, point out the several 
varieties of soils and the capacities and peculiar properties of each, 
together with the crops and culture fand fertilizers adapted to them, 
respectively; and designate the trees and other plants which grow 
upon and characterize them, and lay down upon the map, so far as 
may be, the territory occupied by these several soils. 

“ Resolved, That, in our opinion, the office of State Geologist 
should be continued until the survey of the whole State is completed.” 

The signatures to the memorial are truly significant. W. B. Napton, 
of the supreme bench, gives it the stamp of sound judgment; John 
Locke Hardiman, now, alas! no more, one of the very best farmers of 
the country, and Claiborne Fox Jackson, a farmer and politician, as 
Benton said, “keen to catch the popular will.” 

In obedience to the undoubted will of the people thus expressed, 
a law was passed making it the duty of the State Geologist to carry 
out these wishes of the farmers of the State, and collect the soils and 
secure their analyses and the examination of all their physical prop- 
erties. This has been done, and a large amount®of material provided 
for the teachers of our agricultural college. 

The farmers and mechanics of Buchanan county, and many others, 
also memorialized the law-makers of those days for an agricultural col- 
lege. These farmers of the Northwest hold this significant language: 

“Tt is believed that the introduction of a proper system of agricul- 
tural education will tend not only to the augmentation of material 


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wealth, to anincrease of the value of property, and to the preserva 

tion of our lands from exhaustion by imprudent husbandry, but also 
to foster the higher interests of society. As farmers constitute the 
chief bases of the moral strength of the community, and the main 
pillar of free republican government, it may in some degree be ap- 
_ preciated how vast and general in its reflex influence upon all classes 
would be the beneficial effect of a proper provision for their general 
improvement in mind and practice, and for the elevation of their pur- 
suits from the low rank of a rude and traditional art to the dignity of 
an important and progressive science.” 

Who can doubt that such a school would make its graduates full 
peers of the learned professions in all useful and scholarly attain- 
ments ? 

In 1859, the faculty of the University petitioned the curators to es- 
tablish in the University a school of scientific agriculture and mechan- 
ics. They use this language: 

“No one can doubt that the young farmer may derive much bene- 
fit from the stores of wisdom and experience taught in scientific 
agriculture and the natural sciences. It must be as useful to him to 
understand the composition and structure of the soil as it would be 
to understand the size and form of the lunar mountains. And yet, 
there is not a school in Missouri that will give them the varied and 
valuable principles of sczentiie agriculture. 

“The school proposed will supply this important hiatus in our sys- 
tem of education, and enable the young man, who cannot spare six 
vears to pass through the regular course, to obtain the education most 
useful to him, and to graduate honorably in two or three years. And 
we believe that our young farmers have just as much claim upon the 
State for an education as the lawyers, physicians, and preachers 
have.” 

When the new constitution of the State was formed, this wish of the 
people, so often and so variously expressed, was crystallized in these 
noble words: 

“Article IX., section 4. The General Assembly shall also establish 
and maintain a State university, with departments for instruction in 
teaching, in agriculture, and in natural science.” 

Nor has this feeling been confined to Missouri; it has pervaded all 
parts of the land. This demand for an education suited to the indus- 
trial classes became so potent that it secured the legislation which 
has given each State large tracts of land to endow an industrial col- 
lege.’ 

We boast of our superior advancement, but Europe is far ahead of 
us in establishing industrial schools. The rulers of Europe, who know 
their safety depends upon an abundance of food, have long since de- 
cided that agricultural schools are necessary to secure the largest 
possible production. The number and extent of industrial schools in 
the various countries are truly surprising; and new ones are estab- 


Il 


lished every year. Some of them equal the largest universitiesin the 
number of professors and other facilities; for training their numerous 
pupils. 

England has several agricultural schools; one at Ealing was sus- 
tained by Lady Byron. Prince Albert had a model farm which he 
himself superintended. 

Jreland had five agricultural colleges in 1850, and her board of ed- 
ucation then decided to establish twenty-five others. All public 
school teachers are required to instruct their pupils in the principles 
of agriculture. 

Prussia had five first-class agricultural schools—twenty-eight of an 
inferior grade, devoted to special subjects, as meadows, forests, horti- 
culture, sheep, horses, etc., etc., seventy-two experimental ent and 
numerous monitioeieal’s gar end: 

France had one hundred and thirty-two extensive agricultural 
schools, three hundred minor institutions, besides numerous experi- 
mental farms and gardens under public patronage. There is a fine 
school at Dijon, devoted to grape culture and wine-making. A monthly 
journal devoted to these subject is issued by this institution. There 
is scarcely a doubt that the pupils of this school have amore thorough 
and intelligent knowledge of the climate and soils, and the adapta- 
tions of our State to grape growing, than the pupils of our colleges. 
The facts collected on these subjects by our geological survey are 
used in the lectures of this school, and were published, with illustra- 
tions, in their Wine Grower’s Monthly, the Moniteur, and other jour- 
nals of the empire. 

These facts were esteemed of so much importance to the people of 
lVrance that more than 100,000 copies were there published and circu- 
lated, and yet our own legislators have steadily refused to publish a 
single copy for our people. 

Russia and other-Kuropean governments have made liberal provi- 
sions for industrial education. 

{t is said that, through the influence of these thousand schools and 
other causes, the products of Eastern Europe have been doubled 
during the last half century. And yet, there is not a single school in 
Missouri where our youth can obtain an industrial education. 

Such a state of things is wrong. We contend that the natural 
sciences, those practical deductions of all the experience of preceding 
generations, can be so taught as to benefit our professions more than 
any others. Farmers and mechanics have lived as long, have had as 
much experience, and have made as many useful discoveries, as law- 
vers and physicians; and the results of their experience, embodied in 
the natural sciences, can be made as accessible to the pupil as the 
principles of law or medicine. The experience of Archimedes and 
Cincinnatus is as valuable to us as that of Lycurgus and Esculapius 
to those learned professions; Liebig and Cuvier have done as much 
for the agricultural and mechanical arts as Blackstone and Hunter for 
law and medicine. 


12 


We therefore ask for the adoption of such measures as will enable 
our sons to obtain a practical knowledge of all those sciences which 
pertain to agriculture, mechanics, and mining. We seek the adoption 
of no Utopian theory, no doubtful experiment. The matter has been 
tested, and the results have proven most beneficial to the heads and 
pockets of those interested. That scientific agriculture can make the 
desert bloom like a garden has been too often demonstrated by expe- 
riment to need support at this late day. Many an acre once barren, 
on the sandy shores of Maryland and Long Island, and among the 
stony hills of New England, annually yields its rich harvests, a golden 
tribute to science. 

Shall we say, then, that Cesar, and Peter the Great, and Napoleon, 
and all the rulers of modern Kurope, were deceived as to the utility 
of agricultural education? Why, then, are these nations still in- 
creasing their agricultural colleges? Shall we disregard the wishes 
and convictions of the farmers of our country, whose demands have 
secured this grant of land? Shall we not listen to the wishes of the 
farmers and mechanics ot our own State, so often and so well ex- 
pressed in speeches and memorials to our legislators? But the proof 
is conclusive that we need such a school, and that cur people demand 
a liberal provision for an endustrial college. 

But who shall manage this college of agriculture and mechanics? 

We say put it into the hands of live men, who are in sympathy with 
the progress of the age, and who know the wants of the farm and the 
workshop. But above all things we want teachers in this school who 
know how to teach the practical as well as abstract science; and, to 
secure success, we must have one leading man at least from the work- 
shop and farm, who will be in sympathy with, and who will know the 
wants of, the farmer and mechanic. And besides, he should have all 
the knowledge of science and art that would fully fit him for the high 
station. , | 

Ile should know how to “speed the plow,” and to unfold all the 
treasures of science. He should love the field and the forest, be at 
home in the orchard and in the vineyard, and have the shzboleth of 
the herdsman and the shepherd. Above all, he should be in sympathy 
with man’s highest nature. His examples and teachings should be 
such as would lead our youth to the higher and nobler destinies of 
life. With such men to inspire our agricultural and mechanical col- 
lege, we may expect for it a career of usefulness and brilliant suc- 
cesses such as no other school has achieved. And the man whose 
genius shall give this college a living power; whose learning shall fill 
it with all the attractions of heaven-born science; whose practical 
knowledge shall surround it with all that is useful to the toilers of the 
shop and the farm, and whose zeal and devotion shall inspire our youth 
with a love for the noble powers of the mechanic and the glorious 
pursuits of the farmer—that happy man shall stand pre-eminent 
among the benefactors of the State. 


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It shall be his mission to dispel the remnants of past prejudices 
against practical education. He is not to call us from the labors our 
natures demand, but to restore to those labors the pleasures that sur- 
rounded them in Eden. His instructions will bring his pupils into 
harmony with the laws of the physical universe, and thus relieve them 
from the burden and weariness of work, brought upon Adam and all 
his children by breaking the physical and the moral law. Then shall 
the husbandman control those powers in nature which the poets of 
antiquity made so potent and beautiful in the characters of Pan and 
Ceres, and the pleasures so bewitching in the fair nymphs and naiads, 

As the genius of Jason killed the dragon that guarded the golden 
apples of the Hesperides, so shall the genius and science of our agri- 
cultural college destroy this prejudice against practical education, and 
open in still greater abundance the golden harvests of these Hespe- 
rian climes. 

Our prairies of the North and West, as grand and beautiful as Cam- 
pana, and as rich as the soils of the Nile, will soon be covered with a 
continuous succession of broad acres in rustling corn and waving 
grain, and vast herds of fat cattle shall crop the luxuriant herbage. 
The valleys of our southern border, more beautiful than Arcadia, with 
suns and winds as genial as T'empe, will surpass the gardens of Alci- 
nous in the richness and variety of their fruits. These mountains, 
richer in dews than Hermon, and hills more fruitful than Olivet, will 
surpass the vine-clad hills of Italy and Greece in the extent of their 
vineyards, and vie with Falernium and the Rhine in the quality of 
their wines; and the broad table lands of the Southwest, with foun- 
tains more limpid than Castalia, will surpass Judea and ail the Orient 
in its flocks and herds. 

When industrial education shall have accomplished all these happy 
results; when the farmer’s “Speed the plow” is heard from all our 
broad prairies; when the rustic pipe of the shepherd shall gladden our 
southwestern highlands, and when every hillside shall be vocal with 
the vine-dresser’s song, then shall our youth hasten to engage in these 
‘rural pursuits as an everlasting holiday, and sing with Virgil: 

‘‘Would you be strong? go follow up the plow; 
Would you be wise? go study fields and flowers ; 
Go seek your school in nature’s sunny bowers. 


Fly from the city; nothing there can charm — 
Seek wisdom, strength, and virtue on a farm; 


‘Where fraudless innocence and peaceful rest, 
Unbounded plains and endless riches blest, 
Where caves, and living springs, and airy glades, 
And the soft low of kine, and sleepy shades, 
Are never wanting.’’ 


nn Nghia 


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